My mother has a subscription to The New Yorker, and because I love this magazine as much as her, I am the lucky recipient of all her issues once she is done with them. It really doesn't bother me that I read these articles at a later date; The New Yorker, for the most part, is the kind of magazine that one can pick up in the year 1943, and still have the experience of reading something fresh and insightful. Sometimes, of course, I can't wait for Mom to finish her latest issue, so I will throw caution to the wind and purchase my own copy (usually the Cartoon or the Fiction issue). And on certain occasions, I will happen upon an article in the the current issue that Mom is reading, which is just so riveting (I do love that word), that waiting for her to be done with it simply becomes impossible.
While visiting Mom on Friday, I casually started reading the March 27th issue of The New Yorker, and yes, I became riveted. Author and contributor Calvin Trillin's essay, Alice, Off The Page, a heart-breakingly beautiful love letter to his wife Alice, should be required reading for every human being on this planet. I wasn't able to finish the article while visiting in Burlington, so I purchased it when I got back to Toronto. If you can, I urge you to get a copy of the magazine and read the essay. And I dare you not to be moved.
Here's a snippet of Alice, Off The Page:
Once, for the program at the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp gala, some volunteer counsellors contributed short passages about their experiences at camp, and Alice wrote about one of the campers, a sunny little girl she called L. At camp, Alice had a tendency to gravitate toward the child who needed the most help, and L. was one of those. "Last summer, the camper I got closest to, L., was a magical child who was severely disabled, " Alice wrote. "She had two genetic diseases, one wich kept her from growing and one which kept her from digesting any food. She had to be fed through a tube at night and she had so much difficulty walking that I drove her around in a golf cart a lot....One day, when we were playing duck-duck-goose, I was sitting behind her and she asked me to hold her mail for her while she took her turn to be chased around the circle. It took her a while to make the curcuit, and I had time to see that on top of the pile was a note from her mom. Then I did something truly awful, which I'm reluctant now to reveal. I decided to read that note. I simply had to know what this child's parents could have done to make her so spectactular, to make her the most optimistic, most enthusiastic, most hopeful human being I had ever encountered. I snuck a quick look at the note, and my eyes fell on this sentence: 'If God had given us all the children in the world to choose from, L., we would only have chose you.' Before L. got back to her place in the circle, I showed the note to Bud, who was sitting next to me. 'Quick. Read this,' I whispered. 'It's the secret of life.'"
